stewyb - if there are payload penalties then it means the fares will need to be higher. If people are prepared to pay more to fly from their local airport then that makes total sense but often this isn't the case. Operating payload penalty flight also makes sense if you are far away enough from competitors without restrictions. With SEN they are pretty distant from STN (an hours drive) so there may be a niche, but with SOU it's literally in Ryanair's core BOH catchment and too close to LHR's outer catchment.